Baseball: Playing Pitcher and Catcher Raises Injury Risk

In high school baseball, pitchers who also play catcher are almost three times more likely to sustain an injury according to new research, “Rate of Upper Extremity Injury in High School Baseball Pitchers Who Play Catcher as a Secondary Position,” recently published online in May, 2018 by the National Athletics Trainer’s Association (NATA) in the Journal of Athletic Training.

It is a common practice in baseball for pitchers to play catcher as a secondary role, but the findings of this study suggest that a different secondary position should be considered so the pitchers have more time to recover their throwing arm. Pitchers account for about 73% of all injuries in high school baseball, and about 10% of these injuries require surgery.

“Clinicians, coaches and parents can use this information to determine secondary positions for pitchers to decrease injury risk,” said NATA member and lead author Elizabeth E. Hibberd, Ph.D., ATC, assistant professor in the department of Health Science at the University of Alabama.

According to the data, pitchers who also catch have a 2.9 times greater injury risk because as a catcher, pitchers are still throwing significantly in their secondary position. This suggests that monitoring pitch counts is not enough to protect pitchers from overuse throwing injuries.

In this study, the researchers compared the rate of throwing-related upper extremity injuries between high school baseball pitchers who also play as a secondary position (pitcher/catcher) and those who do not play catcher (pitcher/other). They enrolled 384 male high school baseball pitchers from 51 high school teams in their study and observed them for over three years.

Out of 384 players, 352 (97%) played a secondary position and 32 (8.3%) of them played catcher as their secondary position. During the three year period, the researchers recorded 24 throwing-related shoulder or elbow injuries, five of them in the pitcher/catcher group and 19 in the pitcher/other group. This translated to an injury rate of 15.6% in the pitcher/catcher group and 5.4% in the pitcher/other group.

“Players and adults monitoring their play should use the results of our study and previous research and work with athletic trainers to determine the injury prevention techniques to keep athletes in the game,” said Hibberd.